NMRA LONE STAR REGION Cowcatcher DIVISION 1...

DIVISION 1 Whistle- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

NMRA LONE STAR REGION Cowcatcher

Division 1 Meeting Saturday, July 8, 2017 10 am - 12 Noon at the Texas Western Model Railroad Clubhouse, 6801 Forest Hill Drive Forest Hill, TX Program: Structure Building by Leo & Lorrie Palitti.

Division 1 Members bring home several awards at the recent LSR Convention Bay- ou City Limited in Houston David Grein 1st - Online Structures - PRR Freight House

Lorrie Palitti 2nd - Off-Line Structures - Yuck Brothers 3rd - Displays - Rusty Keg 3rd - Arts & Crafts Theme - LSR Pillows 3rd - Outhouse Linda S. Little Award (highest scoring entry in model contest by a woman) - Rusty Keg ( awards continue on page 5 )

LSR Bayou City Ltd Convention Recap 2017 Thursday, Day 2 of the Lone Star Region in Houston Texas (Day 1 for us) We arrived at 2:00PM and headed straight to the LSR check in and then on to the contest room since it closed at 3:30. Lorrie entered 4 categories (one was in the crafts category) and I entered into 3. This was the first contest either of us had entered so it took about 40 minutes to get our entries entered.

( story continues on page 4 )

Vol. 1. No. 1 July 2017

In This Issue: 2017 LSR Con..1, 4, 5 , 7 Directors Report..........2 Program Director.........3 Prototype Tours...3, 8, 9 Calendar of Events......6 D1 Social Media.........10 Frisco Ft Worth...11 & 12

www.cowcatcherdivision.org

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NMRA Lone Star Region Cowcatcher DIVISION 1

Whistle Vol. 1 No. 1 July 2017

Division 1 DirectorMike Mackey

[email protected]

TreasurerKen Kaiser

[email protected]

Program DirectorDick Brannan

[email protected]

Operations ManagerDavid Grein

[email protected]

Achievement Program Advisors

Leo and Lorrie [email protected]

Contest AdvisorsCasey Akin

[email protected]

Cody [email protected]

WebmasterMike Corley

[email protected]

Newsletter EditorChris Galvin

[email protected]

Directors Report

I’d like to welcome each and every one of you to the first copy of our Division 1 newsletter, “The Whistle.” We are start- ing a new chapter in D1 history, and, with that, we are intro- ducing some new things to provide our members with innova- tive ideas, clinics and ways to enjoy our hobby more. Our new- ly launched division, website cowcatcherdivision.org, will be our main hub for information. There you will find a calendar of events listing everything from train shows to operating ses- sions to upcoming meetings. You can also see a listing of Divi- sion 1 clubs, a forum to exchange ideas and a library of photos of our members work just to mention a few other items. Be sure to send your layout and modeling photos to [email protected] so that they can be added to the page. Speaking of the webmaster, I’d like to publically thank Mike Corley for his outstanding work on our website. It’s my goal to make our website a destination for NMRA members from around the world to land for the exchange of ideas and information about our great hobby. Mike’s work has cer- tainly set us on that track (no pun intended). If you have any ideas regarding additional content to be added to the site, please send them to Mike at the webmaster’s address above for consideration. It may come as a surprise to many of you, but, Division 1, of the Lone Star Region, has over 175 members, and covers 30 counties, in one of the largest divisions in the entire NMRA. It is my honor to serve as your Director, and it is my desire to provide you with the leadership that you’ve entrusted me with. With your help, we can make this the strongest division in the Lone Star Region, and therefore, one of the strongest divisions in the NMRA worldwide. As part of our new division strategy, we have implemented a divisional board of directors (please review these board members on our website and thank them for their help in building our division), a new website, a monthly newsletter and monthly meetings. We already have a full schedule of clinics lined up for the next twelve months. We have not one, but two sponsors for our division meetings. This year we will host a Chris- tmas party for our members with door prizes and giveaways that will rival most other region’s annual conventions. I can see us taking trips and having family oriented outings to baseball games and the like. These are just a few of the ways that we can make Division 1 a model for other divisions world wide. I look forward to getting input from everyone so that we can give you, the members, exactly the things that you are wanting from the NMRA.

What I’ve outlined here is only the tip of the iceberg. To make it a reality it takes participation from you the member. You will definitely get back potentially what you put in. I’m asking that you attend our meetings and see just how much that Division 1 has to offer. Success breeds success and with your attendance and involvement, our division will rightfully be not only Division 1, but the number 1 division in the LSR.

Thanks again for voting me as your new Director. I pledge to do my best to fulfill the role that you’ve given me. Best wishes to all,

Mike Mackey, MMR Director, Division 1 Lone Star Region

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Programs/ Clinics

For the next 6 to 9 meetings our programs and clinics will be concentrating on various methods to improve our modeling skills and techniques and hopefully exposing our membership to alternative and perhaps better ways of doing things.

Leading off the husband and wife team of Leo and Lorrie Palitti will conduct several clinics on structures sharing their various techniques for construction, painting, weathering, and adding those little details that make an interior scene. (More on their background later in this article .) Contin- uing with the structure theme, Mike Corley will be presenting a clinic on creating craft- sman quality roofing for structures early in 2018.

( Above: Leo & Lorrie Palitti ) We are also fortune to have two experts in painting models using airbrushes. In the fall, Brian Howard will present a clinic on painting figures and discussing how he ac- hieves various types of shading with primer coats and achieving very realistic looking skin tones. In early 2018, Bill Huebner will share his evaluation airbrush types, types of equipment and spraying techniques to achieve superior results on models. We also will learn a bit about the future of TEXRail line running from DFW airport to Fort Worth and its equipment, operations strategy, as well as some of the construction challenges. Anchoring our future will be a presentation by Darrell Cowles on the His- tory of Fort Worth.

More From The LSR Bayou City Ltd Convention PROTOTYPE TOURS LSR 2017 HOUSTON CONVENTION One of the greatest opportunities that are available at train conventions is to participate in prototype tours. You get to experience real railroad operations that most model railroaders and very few of the public will ever get to see.

At the Houston convention Kelly Rus- sell deserves credit not only for arran- ging our access to the GBW Railcar Facility (repair railcars), Beauchan Rail Services (clean tank cars for change of service) and the Houston METRO (light rail system) but he was our personal guide and mentor.

GBW Railcar Facility: This facility was located in the Green- sport Industrial Center on the Port of Houston and the site of the old Armco Steel Plant with it massive structures converted to other uses. Switching services is provided by WATCO reporting identification WAMS.

We were able to see the repair of several boxcars with inoperative doors.

One had a door welded to the frame. We saw a 40 year old tank car which ( Continued on Page 8....)

Our July meeting clinic will be on structures and will involve building something we all can use on our railroad. Leo and Lorrie Palitti will conduct the clinic. Their home layout is “The Black Bear and Bayou Railroad “ is a free- lance railroad running from southern Utah to east Texas. Both are members of the Texas Western Model Railroad Club and are working on their Master Model Railroad certificates and re- cently received the Golden Spike Award at last month’s Lone Star Region convention. Leo has been a model rail- roader since 1990 while Lorrie has been modeling for the last eleven years and enjoys structure building with em- phasis on interior details, kit-bashing, and weathering.

A “Make and Take” clinicby the award winning

modeling team of Leo & Lorrie Palitti

Build this steel storage tank that

can be used anywhere on your layout.

(Fee for the clinic is $6.00

Please bring a Xacto Knife and a small pinvise)

Dick Brannan Division One Program Director

4 JULY Whistle 2017 LSR Bayou City Ltd Convention Recap 2017 (story continued from page 1) There was some fine work entered but not near as many as I would have thought? While in the contest room, Gilbert, Gil and Virginia Freitag came in. Not only does Gil have a fantas- tic railroad, his family is also top notch and great ambassa- dors for our hobby.

We checked into our room and headed over to Rosenberg, TX to the Rosenberg Railroad Mus- eum for the LSR BBQ dinner. This was a great experience and I would highly recommend if you’re ever in Houston. The museum had a beautiful G- Scale outdoor layout and an HO layout that was also nice. We were able to walk through an old caboose. The caboose had AC which was very nice since we spent 15 minutes inside. The

( Above: Gilbert, Virginia & Gil Freitag. MMR )

museum also had the old signal tower from the adjoining tracks refurbished and open to tour. Inside was lots of interesting RR artifacts. The creme de la creme was an 1879 passenger car that was converted to a business car for one of the Canadian Nation- al Railroad big wigs around the turn of the 19th century. It must have been pure heaven to travel across Canada in this car. The BBQ was great. I got to see

a lot of old friends and made some new ones. The tables were all under a covered area and when the UP gravel train went by and blew the horn, it made for one hell of an echo!

Friday, Day 3 of the LSR We made a few clinics on Friday. One clinic by Steve Nelson on tree building which was an excellent clinic. Steve put together a comprehensive clinic on modeling trees using a variety of techniques and materials along with an excellent handout. I learned a few new techniques and was introduced to some new prod- ucts. We also saw a clinic on 70 years of rail fanning which was great! We decided to stay at the hotel and hung out in and around the contest room for most of the afternoon. It’s really fun talking to other model railroaders and especially the ones that enjoy building structures.

We volunteered to learn how to grade contest entries so we decided to stay at the hotel today. The contest room closed at

5:00 PM and the contest entries continued to come in throughout the day. When the grading process started, there were about 40 entries in the contest room. Each year the LSR has a fun category in the contest room, this year it was out- houses. There were some great models to be graded in the contest room. At 5:30 PM Lorrie and I were given a tutorial on how to grade and then we moved on to on the job training. I went with Jeff Palmer and Lorrie with Duane Richardson. We were not able to grade entries in categories that we had something entered. We both learned quite a bit during the grading process and in turn should help us later on when we enter contests. “Thank you” to both Jeff and Duane!

At the end of the day, Lorrie had three scores high enough to merit for her AP (Achievement Program). To merit for an AP the modeler needs to score 87.5 out of a possi- ble 125 points. She got a 95 for her outhouse diorama and 108 and 109 for her two models. We didn’t know the outhouse “fun” category was graded so Lorrie was quite happy to have merited with her outhouse entry. She did a superb job on the outhouse. It was complete with ali- gators (to stay with the convention theme) toilet paper, a bicycle, bait bucket and a fishing pole that she used a hair from her head for the fishing line and added a red sprin- kle candy for a bobber. The entire diorama took her 3-4 hours to build on a Saturday afternoon to merit a score of 95 for her MMR. ( LSR Recap continues p. 5)

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( LSR Recap continued from page 4. ) After our grading tutorial we caught a clinic by Greg Johnson on Houston Industrial Parks which was very in- formative. The remainder of the evening was spent kabitzing with other model railroaders.

( Above: Lorrie’s Rusty Keg model ) Saturday, Day 4 of the LSR We had signed up for the home layout tour back in January when we signed up for the convention. Well, the tour was canceled because not enough people signed up for the tour and all money was refunded. Canceling the tour was a real shame since these tours are so much fun. Lorrie and I attended the 2015 Nar- row Gauge Convention in Houston and visited many great home lay- outs. The driving was not easy and having a bus to take us from layout to layout would have been great!! I hope when the LSR returns to the DFW area we can secure an afford- able tour bus for those interested. With the bus canceled we chose to sleep in. We met Mike Mackey for lunch and hung around the beautiful Hilton Westchase hotel all afternoon until it was time for the banquet. A meet and greet was held before the banquet. We stood around talking until the banquet room opened and grabbed a table. We had some great modelers at our table most noteably, Chuck Ellis and his wife Nan. Note: next year’s Lone Star Re- gion Convention is in Round Rock

and Chuck Ellis’ Great Northwest and Pacific will be on the open house tour. This layout is incred-

( awards continued from page 1 )

Leo Palitti 1st - Displays - Skinner’s Row Best Kit-Built Model - Skin- ner’s Row Most Popular Complete Train - Logging Train Most Popular Model - Skin- ner’s Row Novice Best in Show

Mike Mackey, MMR The President’s Award for Outstanding Service to the Lone Star Region

2018 Lone Star Region Convention

Round Rock, TX

June 21 - 24, 2018

Check back for more details in future issues of the Whistle

( Above: Chuck & Nan Ellis at the LSR banquet. ) ible to see in person and worth the price of the convention. Chucks layout has been published numerous times and Alan Kellers Green Frog Productions has a DVD on the layout. Dinner was fabulous! Nice salad, tenderloin and spinach stuffed chicken with cheese cake for desert. First class me- nu and servers. After dinner we enjoyed a terrific guest speaker, Photographer Joe McMillan.

Here’s Joe’s biography in short form. Joe was born in Houston and grew up in York- town, NW of Victoria, TX on the T&NO Yoakum-Kenedy Branch. After graduating from Texas Tech in Lubbock in 1964, Joe joined the Santa Fe engineering department in Topeka. He served the Santa Fe throughout the country including being trainmaster at Hobart yard in LA and Assis- tant Manager of Safety-System at the Chicago headquarters.

( LSR Recap continues p. 7)

( Above: Mike Mackey, MMR is awarded the President’s Award at the Convention by LSR Pres- ident Steve Barkley, MMR.)

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July 1st - YMR Longhorn Divi- sion Meeting, Texas Western Model RR Club, 6808 Forest Hill Dr, Forest Hill, TX 76140, 10 am - 12 pm, John Skiba, Organizer [email protected]

6th - Texas Western Mod- el RR Club Business Meeting, Texas Western Model Railroad Club, 6808 Forest Hill Dr, Forest Hill, TX 76140. 7pm - 9 pm http://twmrc.org/ 8th - NMRA Lone Star Region Cowcatcher Divis- tion 1 Meeting, Texas Western Model RR Club, 6808 Forest Hill Dr, Forest Hill, TX 76140. 10 am - 12 pm,

10th - Cowtown Model RR Club General Meeting, Handley Center, 3024 For- est Avenue, Fort Worth, TX 76112. 7 pm - 9 pm http://cmrrc.webs.com/

15th - NMRA Lone Star Region Division 3 Meeting Christ the Servant Luther- an Church, 821 S. Green- ville Ave, Allen, TX 75002 10 am - 1 pm, http://www.lonestarregion.-com/ node/21

30th - August 1st - 2017 NMRA National Convent- ion; The Rosen Plaza Hot- el, International Drive, Orlando, FL: For More Inforamation, visit www.nmra2017orlando.org

August 3rd - Texas Western Model RR Club Business Meeting, Texas Western Model Railroad Club, 6808 Forest Hill Dr, Forest Hill, TX 76140. 7pm - 9 pm http://twmrc.org/

5th - YMR Longhorn Divi- sion Meeting, Texas Western Model RR Club, 6808 Forest Hill Dr, Forest Hill, TX 76140, 10 am - 12 pm, John Skiba, Organizer [email protected]

12th - NMRA Lone Star Region Cowcatcher Divis- tion 1 Meeting, Texas Western Model RR Club, 6808 Forest Hill Dr, Forest Hill, TX 76140. 10 am - 12 pm,

Calendar of Events

& Trainshows

2017 Texas Western

Train Show

Fort Worth, TXNovember 11 - 12,

2017

Sat. Nov. 11th10 AM - 5 PM

Sun. Nov. 12th11 AM - 4 PM

Forest Hill Civic Center6901 Wichita Street

Forest Hill, TX 76140

More info @twmrc.org

14th - Cowtown Model RR Club General Meeting, Handley Center, 3024 For- est Avenue, Fort Worth, TX 76112. 7 pm - 9 pm http://cmrrc.webs.com/

19th - NMRA Lone Star Region Division 3 Meeting Christ the Servant Luther- an Church, 821 S. Green- ville Ave, Allen, TX 75002 10 am - 1 pm, http://www.lonestarregion.-com/ node/21

Aug. 30th - Sept. 2nd - 37th National Narrow Ga- uge Convention; Marriott Denver, Tech Center, Den- ver, CO; For more info, visit www.37nngc.com

September 9th - Lone Star Division/ Train Collectors Association Toy Train & Swap Meet; Collin College Central Park Campus Conference Cen- ter, 2200 W. University, Mc- Kinney, TX Hours: 9 am - 4 pm; More Information, tca-northtexaschapter.org

30th - October 1st - North Texas Council of Railroad Clubs, 3rd Annual Fall Pla- no Train Show, Plano Cen- tre, 2000 E. Spring Creek Pkwy., Plano, TX; Hours: Saturday, 10 am - 5 pm, Sunday, 10 am - 4 pm; Ad- mission: $8. Adults, 12 & Under free w/adult admis- sion, scouts/scout leaders in uniform free; For more info, dfwtrainshows.com

North Texas Councilof Model RR Clubs

3rd Annual FallPlano Train

Show

Sat. September 30 Sun. October 1,

2017

Sat. 10 am - 5 pmSun. 10 am - 4 pm

Plano Centre2000 E. Spring Creek Pkwy www.dfwtrainshows.com

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( LSR Recap continued from p. 5.... ) Joe’s publications are well known to railfans, and his cal- endars have graced many of our walls. His works include Santa Fe’s Diesel Fleet, Santa Fe Motive Power, Route of the Warbonnets, High Green to Mar- celine, Wheat Lines and Super Freights, Warbonnets and Blue bonnets, and Tumbleweeds and Fast Freights. For many years he served on the board and was President of the Santa Fe Rail- way Historical and Modeling Society. Joe and his wife Nickie live in Arvada, CO, just a long block from the UP Moffat Tunnel line. The trusty Nikon is almost al- ways with him. The McMillan Publications website and his Facebook page are full of visual candy. We look forward to a photo journey of Joe’s life at the banquet. He also is considering an open clinic discussion where attendees can ask questions concerning operations to the pro. I think everyone at the banquet enjoyed Joe’s presentation. After Joe McMillan presentation, it was off to the awards. Mike Mackey started off the awards by receiving the Pre- sidents Award for Outstanding Service. Quite an impressive award for Mike, congratulations is in order! Lorrie and I both received our Golden Spike Award and we’re officially moving on towards our Master Model Rail- roader Awards! As mentioned earlier, Lorrie merited with all three of her builds. She came in third with her outhouse entry, second with her York Brothers entry and tied for second (with MMR

Chuck Lind) with her Pub Crawl diorama. She also won the prestigeous Linda A Little Award given to the best model by a woman with at least 87.5 points scored. For myself I was very fortunate to win Best Kit Built, 1st Place Display, Best Complete Train, Novice Best of Show and Most Popular. This was a fun evening for sure. Sunday, heading home from the LSR Convention.

( Leo Palitti & Chuck Lind ) All our contest entries were loaded up Saturday night so we packed our bags and hit the road at 10:00 AM. Chuck Lind had his layout opened on this day and he’s right off Highway 6 in Navasota. That was good enough to take Hwy 6 and go through Waco on our way home. Chucks Tall Pine Lum- ber Company Railroad is a fan-

tastic O/On3 layout. Loaded with details and fine structures. Chucks home made pine trees are gorgeous. Vis- iting Chucks layout was the perfect ending for a great weekend. Time for us to get busy, we have a railroad to build! Leo Palitti Division One AP Advisor

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( Continued from Page 3 .....) was undergoing a complete overhaul so it could be certified for an additional ten years of service. Beauchan Rail Ser- vices Facility: This facility was located adjacent to the GBR facility. They process cars with non-hazardous materials. Cars carrying hazardous materials are processed at their Baytown facility. There are two servicing tracks which are capable of cleaning up to 10 cars at a time. Clean- ing is required when the cars are changed from one product service like cooking oil to a lubricant. The inside of the car is washed with a high pres- sure steam system using a Dawn type detergent. The residue is pumped into a storage tank car. When full the wa- ter is sent by truck to a pro- cessing facility. They also clean non-hazardous pressurized tank cars. Nitrogen gas is used to force the residual vapors into a gas flare stack where the vapors are incinerated. When the flame goes out on the stack the tank car has been purged of the flam- mable vapors. For those prototype modelers who like to weather tank cars the photo below shows a tank car with dirt spraying up on the tank end. It also shows the current practice of painting the car numbers on the trucks. You may ask why that is important. Well if there is an accident the railroad knows which trucks belong to each car and then they know when the trucks/wheels were last serviced or replaced. On our way out of the port facility we encountered a 20-axle 550 ton Schnable wheel depressed flat car owned by the Contractors Cargo Co. A rare sight CCCX 400011 is used to transport large transformers.

Houston Metro (Light Rail system) The Houston Metro Light Rail System consists of three lines. The Red line runs N/S. The Green and Purple run E/W and share the same tracks in the downtown area. There are two facilities the ROC and the S&I.

ROC (Region Operations Center):

We began our tour at the ROC which houses the administrative offices, dispatch center, and the major repair facility. At the Dis- patch Center we were able to ob- serve the movement of the cars throughout the system. While much of the switching in controlled by the computers the dispatcher can override the computer at any time. He also has access to cameras at each station so the dispatcher can monitor any activity at the stations.

He also can monitor any station problems such as the ticket machines not operating.

The ROC maintenance facility does all the car maintenance on all the Red line cars.

( Continued on Page 9 .........)

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( Continued on from Page 8 .......) Fiberglass repair, painting and truck rebuilding is done for the entire fleet.

All the equipment for track and the overhead wires are kept in this facility. The cocoon actually contains a light rail car that was involved in a accident with a vehi- cle at a crossing with the gates down. Each evening all the cars are cleaned and washed.

S&I (Safety & Inspection center) The S&I is located near the end of the Purple Line so we took a light rail car to the center. The S&I does all the minor re- pairs for the Green and Purple lines. Upon arrival we were given a brief history of the Light Rail Sys- tem. We then proceeded to view their maintenance facility. After leaving the maintenance area we were able to get on board one of the H3 cars which was powered up so we could see what information the engineer has access to. The engineer has video

screens which shows the track in front and behind the cars and the people in the cars. Another scr- een shows if there are any mechanical or electri- cal problems such as a door malfunction or a problem with some other com- ponent of the cars. He also can speak to the people in the cars and the Dispatcher with a hand held mic.

The two day prototype events were well worth the time spend and provided the attendees with a rewarding look into ac- tual railroad operations.

Ken Kaiser Division One Treasurer

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Division One on the Web, Facebook and

Twitter Howdy folks, If you are digitally inclined, Division One has three resources for you to keep up with events and news. First is the website, http://cowcatcherdivision.org (see Figure 1, Division One website). The website presents the latest Division related news, a calendar of events, past issues of the Whistle, a member area, how to contact division leadership, and all about the Division One organization. The Member Area has a place for discussions in the Forum, personal rail- roading Photos, Meeting photos, the Program for the year, Clinics, and Area Clubs. You only need to sign up or in when posting in the forums, the rest you may access without signing in.

Figure 1, Division One website

If you use Facebook, the division is there too: https://www.facebook.com/cowcatcherdivision. You can select the icon at the top of the website page to either go to the division’s Facebook page, Like or Follow the Division One Facebook page (see Figure 2, Facebook Link [orange arrow]):

Figure 2, Facebook Link If you are a Twitter fan, then you can Visit, Follow, or Tweet by selecting the Twitter icon (see Figure 3, Twit- ter Link [orange arrow]):

Figure 3, Twitter Link [orange arrow] If you have an RSS reader, then you can select the RSS Feed icon (see Figure 4, RSS Feed icon [orange arrow]) to follow the division there:

Figure 4, RSS Feed icon [orange arrow] Well, that about covers the topic. I hope you enjoy our image in the digital world. It will be much better when you contribute to it. Happy rails,

Mike Corley Division One Webmaster


Frisco in Fort Worth This article is the first in a descriptive series about the Saint Louis and San Francisco Railroad, nicknam- ed the Frisco, with reporting marks of SLSF. The Frisco was one of seven railroads that serviced Fort Worth. Those railroads were T&P, GC&SF, MKT (Katy), CRI&P (Rock Island), FW&D, and SSW (Cotton Belt) and are included in this series articles where they present context within the Fort Worth Terminal area. The purpose of this series of articles is to describe Frisco activities in Fort Worth in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. The series will include articles about Frisco freight operations including switching bound- aries, customers, interchanges, freight forwarding, industrial districts, yards, team tracks, warehouses, grain elevators, freight house, etc. Away We Go!

Fort Worth Terminal In perspective - the Fort Worth Terminal So, what was the Fort Worth Terminal? What areas were in its switching district, what areas were outside, and what railroads switched the industries in the Fort Worth Terminal? Simply stated, the Fort Worth Terminal was the area within and around the Fort Worth city limits that was served by railroads. The switching limits for all railroads in Fort Worth were bounded by the Fort Worth city limits. Saginaw, Haltom City, and Richland Hills were outside the Fort Worth city limits but inside the switching limits of the Fort Worth Terminal area. The Fort Worth Terminal was around 150 square miles. The area included 1000 miles of track, seven freight stations, eight major train yards and nine auxiliary yards, two passenger stations, and served around 400 industry rail sidings. Who switched what? In describing who switched what in Fort Worth Terminal area, the following paragraphs list the serving railroads on the four points of the compass: * North Fort Worth was served by the Frisco, Cotton Belt, Katy, Rock, GC&SF and Fort Worth Belt (FWB) railroads.The Fort Worth Belt Railway was owned and operated by the T&P; however, all industries on the FWB were open for reciprocal switching. * South Fort Worth was served by the Frisco, GC&SF, Katy, and T&NO. * East Fort Worth was served by Rock and T&P railroads. * West Fort Worth was served by the Frisco and T&P.

Exceptions: The Carswell Air Base and the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft plant were just inside the Western Fort Worth boundary and considered local points on the T&P Railway in Benbrook. Handley and Jamestown were both inside the Eastern Fort Worth boundary but were outside the switching limits and switched by the T&P Railway as local points.

( Continued on Page 12......)


( Continued from Page 11......)

Enter the Frisco The Frisco entered the Fort Worth Terminal area over Rock Island tracks from Irving destined for the North Fort Worth Yard (Frisco). The trip to Fort Worth also included a short trip over Cotton Belt track near the Frisco’s North Fort Worth freight house (see figure 1.1 Frisco in Fort Worth circled 1). The numbered references on the diagram represent Team Tracks which will be discussed in a subsequent article.

Figure 1.1 Frisco in Fort Worth

The Frisco had seven miles of main line track and 32 miles of yard and industry track within the Fort Worth Terminal area. Next Time The next article will describe the Frisco freight yards (Main Yard, aka West Yard or 8th Street Yard], City Yard, and North Fort Worth Yard) and their respective capacities, trains, switch engines, and schedules. Until Next Time - Happy Rails

Mike Corley

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